Manuel here continuing our NYFF coverage with a film about the late great Nora Ephron, Everything is Copy. An HBO documentary, it played to quite the packed house last week with nary a dry eye in the house by its end.
Nora was…
Kind. Open. Generous. Witty. Interesting. Funny.
Ambitious. Mean. Tough. Malevolent. Judgmental.
You’d expect the first half of those adjectives to make an appearance in the touching portrait of Ephron by her son, Jacob Bernstein. That Everything is Copy includes the latter half is what makes it a pricklier and much more fascinating exploration of the late writer and director.
Quotes from Spielberg, Streep and more after the jump...
The title, which bears explaining, was a motto of Ephron’s mother, a writer herself (along with her husband they wrote screenplays, including those for Carousel and Daddy Long Legs). It means everything is fodder for a story. It goes hand in hand with Ephron’s famous dictum that you should strive to be the hero of your story, not the victim. And so, Everything is Copy immediately plunges you into a family with a history of making their life into copy, from an anecdote about Ephron’s sister that later made it to a film their parents wrote, through Ephron’s own autobiographical essays, films and novel, and to Bernstein’s desire to turn his mother’s death into copy.
Ephron’s death, from leukemia in 2012, was perhaps one of the greatest shocks in recent Hollywood history. Having hidden the fact that she was sick for years, her “sudden” death had everyone talking: many were offended, plenty were aghast. Overall there was a sense of confusion and anger. Ephron, who’d made a living out of making everything copy had, in the end, barely divulged her illness to those closest to her. Why? This question motivates much of Bernstein’s moving documentary even as it also functions as a primer on Ephron’s life, and more thrillingly, on her writing.
“This is the most fascinating thing in the whole world. Because she’s the one who said ‘There is no privacy. Forget privacy!’ And what she achieved was… a private act.” - Meryl Streep
As someone who grew up with the Ephron of Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail, getting to learn about her troubled family history, her unlikely start as a New York Post reporter, her rise to fame as a brilliant Esquire essayist on feminist issues, and the personal hell that was her divorce from Carl Bernstein (which she’d exorcised in her novel Heartburn, made into the not very successful Meryl Streep/Jack Nicholson film of the same name) was not just informative but necessary.
“I always wanted her to like me.”
Charlie Rose, Steven Spielberg, and Tom Hanks all repeat this same line. Seeking Nora’s approval was on top of a lot of people’s minds. But what initially sounds like a compliment, also turns out to be a rather insightful jab at Ephron’s ability to skewer anyone around her. No wonder no one wanted to be on her bad side. She did, after all, fire the original kid actor from Sleepless in Seattle without a second thought. Yes, Nora could be mean, but, as Barbara Walters puts it, you had to remember that she could get away with it because she was funny.
What made her palatable was her wit and Bernstein is smart enough to sprinkle his mother’s words throughout. On top of gossip-like interviews with his mother’s friends and family, we’re treated to readings of her essays by the likes of Gaby Hoffman, Lena Dunham, Reese Witherspoon, Meg Ryan, and Rita Wilson. Indeed, Ephron’s own excerpts from her latest audiobooks make up much of the narrative voice-over of the piece. It all adds up to making this a convivial affair, like a family gathering where you’re equally prone to say the nicest things about a sibling, or an ex-wife, as you are to air your grievances without any ill-will toward them. This type of banter is particularly juicy in his interactions with Marie Brenner, a close friend of Ephron who’d dated Jacob’s father before Nora did.
What are you asking? Oh. Are we playing one of your mother’s charades games? Are you asking me if your father was wildly unfaithful and would call up my friends from my apartment to set up late night dates with them?
Did he?
I wouldn’t know!
For those who loved Ephron’s work whether in print or on screen, Everything is Copy, is a must-watch; giving us access to Ephron’s life story (there’s a number of deliciously vicious late night interview clips that showcase the scathing wit everyone feared: “You’re a fan of Julie Nixon, eh? I’m not; I think she’s a chocolate-covered spider!”) and the process that made her work speak to so many of us. I have to admit that the film succeeds most of all in using Ephron’s own motto (“everything is copy”) as a way to reframe and rethink through her greatest successes (her Esquire essays, Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, Heartburn the novel), her misfires (Heartburn the film, Hanging Up), and those in between (seen through the eyes of her loved ones with the knowledge that it became her last film, Julie & Julia becomes a dazzling refraction of her late life).
Smart, witty, and moving, Everything is Copy is a tender, but not for that hagiographic, portrait of Nora Ephron that emerges as a keen meditation on death, privacy, and the power of telling one’s own story.
Everything is Copy screens as part of NYFF on Tuesday September 29th and Saturday October 3rd, and will air on HBO sometime in early 2016.